Recently I posed a question among several of my LinkedIn groups. The question was “Do you think brand redefinition via social media is a serious business threat? Or is it just ‘much ado about nothing?’ “ If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I believe brand redefinition, unmanaged that is, to be a major threat corporations face as social media proliferate. But apparently not many agree with me. Witness this discussion here to see what I mean. And this discussion is just one of several I started in the groups to which I belong. The sentiment expressed in the other discussions was largely about the same.
In fact, several of the respondents didn’t seem to understand the term. They were answering the question as if the term “brand redefiniton” meant its inverse, brand definition, or just brand image establishment. Here’s one example. After a few of those misunderstandings, I inserted as a comment a definition of the term, which you’ll see in this example.
Now, the posing of this question and the number of responses certainly do not represent a scientifically controlled study. My exploration of the topic in this manner amounts to nothing more than water-cooler chat. Yet it’s still interesting to note the number of people who had either 1) no idea of what I was talking about, or 2) understood what I was talking about, but didn’t feel that the issue was of much concern.
Just as brand redefinition is a business threat, so is the fact that understanding of the issue is so low. A double whammy. It’s usually what we don’t know that hurts us the most.
